Tag Archives: best burgers on West Coast

Truffle Burger

Truffle Burger, Lark Creek Steak, SF

Burgers are prime candidates for creative culinary additions: cheeses, pickles, tomatoes, relish, aioli, sauce, condiments, and bacon (of course). Truffles are inherently additives to dishes, due to their seasonal availability, a continual scarcity that makes them cost-prohibitive as anything but a topping.

But if you love the taste of truffles, you’ll love this truffled steakburger from Lark Creek Steak. It’s got truffled brie cheese, frisee, truffle vinaigrette, and house-made onion marmalade atop the LCS standard steakburger, my favorite burger on the West Coast. It’s not a truffle flavor overkill like some truffle-inspired dishes, but a good balance of that earthy, sexy flavor that will satisfy your truffle urges without piercing your bank account. (Well, it’s a small piercing, like a nose ring.) Another excellent burger from Chef John Ledbetter and company at Lark Creek Steak.

Best Mushroom Burger – Lark Creek Steak

Awesome Mushroom Burger, Lark Creek Steak

My favorite mushroom burger of 2009 (to date) is Lark Creek Steak’s mushroom steakburger. Their beef preparation should be copied by others: they use an open, wood-fire grill to cook their burgers. Their top-quality ingredients are evident by taste, and they precisely cut the portions of lettuce, pickle, and onion so that they actually fit within the burger’s radius. Hearty, healthy, high-minded ingredients all make this steakburger a great one. The fat-cut fries are really good, too.

burger accoutrements are perfectly proportioned and flavorful (butter lettuce has more flavor than typical iceberg lettuce; pickles are crisp and long-sliced to fit flat across burger; red onion is also well-sliced and grilled to mildly caramelize flavors)

Cowboy (bacon & cheese BBQ) Burger

Best Bacon Cheeseburger: Lark Creek Steak's Cowboy Burger

I love bacon cheeseburgers with BBQ sauce. It’s a combination of hearty flavors that seems quite natural and, while each of the flavors of bacon, BBQ sauce, sharp cheddar, and onion are individually powerful and can overwhelm any dish, within a burger context they somehow seem to play well together. When the burger is done properly, that is. Everyone and their mother has a bacon cheeseburger, but very few places make one that stands out as strongly as the cowboy burger from Lark Creek Steak.

The Best BBQ Bacon-Cheeseburger on the West Coast

Of the 40+ burgers I’ve tried in the past 6 – 8 months, the “cowboy burger” at Lark Creek Steak is far and away the best BBQ burger or the best bacon-cheeseburger of them all. So (at least for now) I can confidently proclaim Lark Creek Steak’s cowboy burger as the best bacon-cheeseburger on the West Coast. Nothing else has come close over the past year.

burger accoutrements are perfectly proportioned and flavorful (butter lettuce has more flavor than typical iceberg lettuce; pickles are crisp and long-sliced to fit flat across burger; red onion is also well-sliced and grilled to mildly caramelize flavors)